You couldn' kill dat man wid a broad-ax, Missy!" And he went down the hail leaving the reverberations of his hilarity behind him.

The purpose of his visit had been effected, for, when Miss Betty appeared upon the horse-block in her green habit and gauntlets, she was smiling; so that only a woman--or a wise old man--could have guessed that she had wept bitterly that morning.
She cantered out to the flat, open country to the east, where she found soft dirt-roads that were good for the bay colt's feet, and she reached a cross-road several miles from town before she was overcome by the conviction that she was a wicked and ungrateful girl.

She could not place the exact spot of her guilt, but she knew it was there, somewhere, since she felt herself a guilty thing.
For the picture which Nelson had drawn rose before her: the one man standing alone in his rage on the platform, overwhelmed by his calm young adversary, beaten and made the butt of laughter for a thousand.
Her father had been in the wrong in that quarrel, and somehow she was sure, too, he must have been wrong in the "personal" one, as well: the mysterious difficulty over Fanchon's Mr.Gray, who had looked so ashamed last night.

What feud could they make over him, of all people in the world?
He looked strong enough to take care of his own quarrels, even if he was so rigorously bound by Fanchon's apron-string when it came to a word with another girl! But the conclusion that her father had been in error did not lessen the pathetic appeal of the solitary figure facing the ridicule of the crowd.
She felt that he always honestly believed himself in the right; she knew that he was vain; that he had an almost monstrous conception of his dignity; and, realizing the bitterness of that public humiliation which he had undergone, she understood the wrath, the unspeakable pain and sense of outrage, which must have possessed him.
And now she was letting him go forth upon a journey--his way beset with the chances of illness and accident--whence he might never return; she was letting him go without seeing him again; letting him go with no word of farewell from his daughter.

In brief: she was a wicked girl.